The Literary Monster on Film

Many monsters in Victorian British novels were intimately connected with the protagonists, and representative of both the personal failings of a character and the failings of the society in which he or she lived. By contrast, more recent film adaptations of these novels depict the creatures as arbitrarily engaging in senseless violence, and suggest a modern fear of the uncontrollable. This work analyzes the dichotomy through examinations of Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stoker’s Dracula, H. Rider Haggard’s She, Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, and consideration of the 20th century film adaptations of the works.

Abigail Burnham Bloom has written several books and many articles on Victorian writers, including the Carlyles and the Brontës. She lives in Southampton, New York.

Abigail Burnham Bloom

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 218
Bibliographic Info: 26 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4261-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5759-5
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1
Introduction      3

1 CREATOR AND MONSTER
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818)      9
Frankenstein, dir. James Whale (1931)      20
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, dir. Kenneth Branagh (1994)      30

2 THE DUALITY OF GOOD AND EVIL
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)      42
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. John S. Robertson (1920)      54
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. Rouben Mamoulian (1931)      62
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. Victor Fleming (1941)      74

3 BEAUTY AND ETERNAL LIFE
She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887)      83
She, dir. Lansing C. Holden and Irving Pichel (1935)      94
She, dir. Robert Day (1965)      104

4 MAN AND ANIMAL
The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells (1896)      112
Island of Lost Souls, dir. Erle C. Kenton (1933)      120
The Island of Dr. Moreau, dir. Don Taylor (1977)      127
The Island of Dr. Moreau, dir. John Frankenheimer (1996)      136

5 VAMPIRE AND VICTIM
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)      146
Nosferatu, dir. F. W. Murnau (1922)      159
Dracula, dir. Tod Browning (1931)      168
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1992)      177

Conclusion      189
Notes      195
Bibliography      199
Index      205

“recommended”—Choice.